FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was Sunday, March 30, 1975…Easter Sunday, but it would have made little to no difference to me. I hadn’t been a churchgoer for the most current half of my life and was too old for Easter baskets and egg hunts. Might have indulged in some chocolate however, because--chocolate… On this holy day, a man named James Rupert in Hamilton, Ohio, killed 11 members of his family… Just yesterday, the 29th, Da Nang, Vietnam had fallen to North Vietnamese forces and everybody knew for sure that that terrible war was in its final stages…Top song in the U.S. was “Lovin’ You” by Minnie Riperton…

loving you minnie riperton

1975 was the year of my career in which I was least-employed as an actor. Early in the year, I had a dinner theater job which ran about 15 weeks, about 3 weeks shorter than projected. Then, deep in the summer, I had a gig which only lasted a couple of weeks and for which, because of some shenanigans in which I took part, I wasn’t paid. Finally, another paying job started the day after Christmas. And that was it for 1975. That was the last year in which I spent more time working for my dad than I did as an actor. Starting in ‘76, I would be much much busier almost all the time.

On this date I was working in that early-in-the-year show (A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM) in Indianapolis.

Somehow, I managed, however, to see today’s movie in a Louisville theater. I don’t remember how that worked. Either I drove home immediately after the day’s performance and went straight to the movies, or else that Sunday performance was cancelled. Either is a viable possibility.

At any rate, I did go to the Penthouse Theater on 4th Street in Louisville to see what was, I think, my first X-rated horror film. The movie was VAMPYRES.

In recent days, particularly on the Classic Horror Film Board, I’ve noticed lots of Monster Kids voicing approval for this movie. I couldn't agree, thinking it much more softcore sex than horror. Oh, sure vampires and blood, but most of all, a couple of gorgeous women who seem to be allergic to clothing.

I’ll readily admit that all-American, straight, 25-year-old me appreciated the sight of these unclothed lovelies, but that didn’t make it a good film.

The main specific memory I have of my initial reaction to this skinflick was that the young blonde “Vampyre” was gorgeous and that the older brunette was…matronly. In my twenties I was evidently somewhat immune to the charms of older women. In my seventies, I expect I’ll view the older brunette as a very attractive and--from my current vantage point --very young beauty.

Let’s see.  Roll ‘em…

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No wasting time here. Right off the bat, even before the credits, we see a brightly lit scene of two stark naked ladies lesbianing to beat the band.

Then the credits, then some not very good acting from an elderly character man.

So far, about 25 minutes in, there’s some too-slow suspense, some overlit mystery, and some blunt softcore sex, just with better actors than in standard softcore fare.

These are daylight-strolling vampires, though, since it is England after all, not exactly sunlight vampires.

The ladies are pleasantly mismatched. One is a dark, fleshy, earth mother sort while the other is fair, slim, almost gamine. If the dark lady couldn’t quite pass as the mother of the blonde, she at least could be her considerably older sister.

They have a curious response to daylight. A curious, varying response, it seems. They seem to stroll easily enough during the day, but then when the sun rises on a new day, there’s a sudden urgency on their part to get away.

No fangs for these bloodsuckers, though one of them does manage a neck bite anyway.

So that was that. That was VAMPYRES. I wasn’t exactly right. It’s not just softcore schlock. It’s just almost just softcore schlock. There is an attempt at some horror film stuff, but it’s pretty meek, if occasionally bloody. 

In final analysis, the selling points of this film are the two naked ladies. Apart from that, this is a little muddled and it simply ain’t much.

                 CHRONOLOGY OF CLASSIC HORROR FILMS: THE 1940S

        By Donald C. Willis

I enjoyed Don Willis’s earlier volume on the Classic Horror of the ‘30s, and, guess what…I like this one even more. When I discussed the earlier tome I suggested that some of Willis’s prose was “stream of consciousness” or something in that area. This time around there’s not so much “stream of” whatever. The writing is smoother and easier to follow. Good move.

Willis’s standards for inclusion in the ‘horror’ category--just like everybody else's-- are pretty loose and lax..except when they’re not. There are quite a few films covered here which wouldn’t pass muster with my evidently more stringent requirements. But that’s okay, I’d much rather he cast his nets wide and gone, than if he squeezed out anything which might arguably belong. Better to haul in a few minnows than to let a juicy sturgeon slip through. (A fish metaphor--niiice.) Besides, all his inclusions are reasonable and understandable, meaning that nothing is covered here which has NO claim to the horror designation, just that there are some which I wouldn’t stretch to include. 

From my casual, non-careful count, 153 movies get individual coverage here. By my lights, 108 of those clearly belong in a book on “Horror Films.” Another 22…maybe. I could go either way. And then there are 23 inclusions which would definitely be exclusions for me. But again-- their presence here is understandable. They may not be in the ballpark, but they're in the ballpark’s neighborhood.

As the title suggests, the book proceeds from year-to-year, 1940 through 1949 with each film discussed according to date of release. This pattern allows the reader to look at what was playing when, what other movies opened at the same time, how these movies related to each other in time.

In addition to commenting on the movies themselves, Don also offers thoughts on other film versions of the same stories, and also on the books which inspired the films.

Willis has plenty of opinions, lord knows, but rarely are they sweeping. Very little “this is lousy” or “this is great” There’s much more of “this element was lousy, but this element was great.” This sprinkling of praise and pan allows almost everyone to agree and/or disagree with just about everything. There’s a lot I agree with, absolutely, and also a fair amount I don’t agree with, but only a couple of instances in which Willis’s opinion clearly shows that the man is a lunatic.

I won’t list the disagreements I have with Don’s opinions…with two exceptions.

He’s surprisingly lukewarm toward ALL THAT MONEY CAN BUY, which is widely considered--by me for sure--a genuine classic

And here’s the real proof for the sanity hearing…He names, as Dud of the Year for 1944  “Fox’s Nitwit version of THE LODGER”

So yeah sure, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, blah blah blah. But where this opinion is concerned, I have to ask…Gunga Don, what the hell is the matter with you?!?!?!

I will admit that, after reading that Dud of the Year thing in the opening comments for 1944, I feared what Don might get up to when actually focusing on THE LODGER. But, while he has little good to say in his LODGER comments, his reaction is really more “meh” than “bah.” He does term both THE LODGER and HANGOVER SQUARE as “weak tea.” Okay, sure. I got ya weak tea right here, Don.

I spotted a couple of elements of these films with which Gunga Don seems surprisingly, amusingly fascinated. For one thing, he finds great amusement, as I think we all do, in all those fake newspapers which earn close-ups in old movies.

And, even more, Willis is endlessly interested in and impressed by the “gowns” worn by our various leading ladies. Vera West might almost be the unexpected heroine of this book. Several times he adds, “fashion comments by Mo”. So it’s pretty clear that Don watched these movies in the company of his better half, who took stereotypically feminine interest in the fashions. Anyway, Vera West: Horror Heroine!

Some Willis-isms which tickled me…he lists several psychological horrors set in NYC, terming it “Manhattan, Island of Lost Souls”.

Referring to all the doctors in NIGHT MONSTER, he calls the Ingston place “The Old Doc House.” Heh. Good one.

Does a nice job of identifying Boris Karloff’s role in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN as “monster traffic-director.”

He opines that, in THE MUMMY’S GHOST, it  “could be anyone--Tom Tyler, Eddie Parker…Cary Grant-- behind the Jack Pierce makeup…at odd moments it looks like it could even be Chaney.”

Discussing the questionable qualities of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, Willis asks the musical question, “what’s not to love here?” Oh, Don. Do you seriously want an answer to that?

“If the 1930s was Universal and monsters, the 1940s was RKO and mood, states of mind.”

I would probably have said “Lewton” rather than RKO, but Willis’s broader sweep is probably more accurate.

Most entries get coverage ranging from half-a-page to two pages. A few earn a little more. Five pages for THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. 

ISLE OF THE DEAD at 5 ½ pages is the longest entry. This is a movie on which he and I are utterly in sync. It’s a great, too often-undervalued, horror movie. And he cleverly, and so incisively refers to that film’s climactic sequence as “The Seven Minutes”.

After telling us, of the Crime Doctor films, “One entry in that series, SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT (1944), borders on horror,” he proceeds to include two or three of them among his entries. He’s right that a couple of them do “border on horror,” but personally, I don’t think any of them really qualify.

He tells us that SPOOK BUSTERS opened just about a week after THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES.  Poor SPOOK BUSTERS…

He writes that the short story upon which BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS was based was called “The Beast”. I just recently read the story which, in the version I read, carried the full “...with Five Fingers” title. I suspect neither of us is wrong here.

In a flash forward to the Langella DRACULA, Willis, obviously deep under the influence of hallucinogens, says the movie “saves the best for last” and actually praises the Dracula kite scene.

RETURN OF THE APE MAN:  “what can you say about a movie in which the actor (George Zucco) billed third in the credits is not even in it?”   Welllll…to be entirely, technically, nitpickingly accurate--Zucco is in the movie. For one short shot, lying unconscious on the slab. Once he wakes, it’s Frank Moran the rest of the way.

He writes that, in HOUSE OF DRACULA,  hunchbacked Nina “apparently dies.” Don is much more of an optimist than I am. His test tube is half-full. That girl be dead.

The book is pretty darn clean. I spotted only maybe two or three typos, and one of them might not be a typo at all. Might be an attempt at cleverness which didn’t make it. 

A couple of things which Willis probably did check on, but trusted the wrong web source: the plural of “bus” (as in a Lewton “bus”) is “buses”. Though some online places accept “busses”, the accepted (and proper) spelling is “buses.”  “Busses” means “kisses”.

See? Those are really tiny and really pedantic. That’s what I’m so FAMOUS for!

So, finally, congratulations and mucho thanks to Don Willis for this wonderfully readable, informative, and truly entertaining book. Full marks, old bean!

FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

      Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, April 28, 1973..A series of munition explosions injured 48 people in Roseville, California. The blasts and fire at the Southern Pacific Railroad yard were traced to overheated brakes on a box car that was transporting highly explosive aircraft ammunition… Six Irishmen were arrested by the Irish Naval Service off County Waterford, on a coaster carrying five tons of weapons destined for the Provisional Irish Republican Army... Six elderly women were killed in Kansas City, Kansas after their apartment building was set on fire. An 18-year old newspaper carrier and a 16-year old accomplice were arrested later in the day on charges of arson and six counts of murder.^[

        The top song in the country this day was TIE A YELLOW RIBBON ROUND THE OLD OAK TREE by Tony Orlando and Dawn. I trust everyone knows that one.

     Personally, I got nuthin’.  I was between shows at the time. We’d just recently closed THREE MEN ON A HORSE and GUYS AND DOLLS was a few months off. 

      I was married at the time but I can’t tell you much about it. I remember a few incidents from that not-quite-two-year disaster, but of daily life—not a clue. I honestly can’t remember our living together, what we did, what we didn’t. It truly seems as if it was something I heard about happening to someone else. Nothing to do with me.

But a Saturday night in 1973 meant “Fright Night” on Channel 41. That night The Fearmonger had his usual double feature in store for us, a John Carradine duo: the second feature, which I’d already seen, was THE UNEARTHLY. But the opener, a genuine old Universal Horror was new to me. I didn’t expect much from it, but still it was pretty neat to finally see…

CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN

It feels as if I should have seen this in ’62 on Shock Theater. It was included in the second Shock package, titled Son of Shock. But I like to think that someone at Channel 32, back in 1962, decided to spare us any of the adventures of Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman.

Probably not, but I still like to think so.

I did not enjoy CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN that night and why should I? It’s not a good movie. I’ve seen it a few times over the years and it hasn’t gotten better. Tonight I’ll be watching it again in honor of the 50th anniversary of that first viewing. There’s no reason to expect it’ll be any better this time.

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Evelyn Ankers’s considerable beauty is much too covered by the enormous hat she wears in her first scene. Then, later, she’s all smothered in a hat/scarf combo thing. She’s much too pretty to be hidden away by her own wardrobe…

                                            Enormous hat, enormous shadow, too-hidden Evie.

                Smothering hat thing. And lovely Martha MacVicar not burdened with headgear.

Fred’s bragging of bringing back 20 tigers, 20 lions, and blah blah blah doesn’t sound so great in these more enlightened times…

So Carradine’s character has taken Ankers out to dinner “several times” yet she still calls him “Dr. Walters”…

Milburn Stone was supposedly cast because his physical resemblance to Clyde Beatty made it easier to pass old Beatty footage off as being Stone. Well and good, and some of the trickery works well enough, but the resemblance is not all that strong and frequently it’s clearly not Stone when it’s supposed to be. There’s also a couple of particularly clumsy bits. Once we can clearly see Beatty in a scene of which Stone is a supposed onlooker. Another time we see Beatty in the cage facing off against the critters before Stone enters the cage…

Here in 1943 Carradine is calm, cool, a very acceptable leading man (villainous variety). Please compare to his wild-eyed moron in ’44’s VOODOO MAN. Hmm. Wonder which was more of a stretch?…

The nurse says that Carradine shouldn’t “tamper with things no man or woman should ever touch.” If she’d said “tamper in God’s domain” it would have been perfect…

It’s odd that when we first see Paula Dupree, she’s already a woman fully growed. Nothing apish about her. She’s Acquanetta! There’s no scene of monkey becoming woman…

The treatment of the animals—surely typical of the time—is frankly horrendous…

Acquanetta is a true beauty but, even with no lines to speak, it’s painfully obvious that she’s no actress. By the way, no one ever mentions her total lack of speech. Or are we supposed to think that, off-camera, Paula Dupree’s mouth runs non-stop?…

Obviously this still shows Acquanetta's beauty. Amazingly, it also somehow shows her lack of talent.

“I wonder if you’ll be that easy to train after we’re married..” Yeah, the treatment of women is also very last century…

I hate the old and/or amateur actor’s habit of holding his hands at waist level in front of him. It’s a sure sign of an actor who doesn’t know what to do with his hands. And it seems to be Lloyd Corrigan’s normal stance…

Yeah, a gorilla gal and a cage full of big cats isn’t enough excitement for a 60 minute movie. We need a big storm too and, hey, let’s have an audience panic as well…

Well…it ends, but that’s not exactly an ending.

Between the sexism, the racism, and the animal abuse, this is particularly problematic in these days.

Not a good movie, and silly in the extreme, but not without some low-brow entertainment value. And that’s quite the compliment, isn’t it?

                                                                        There's our girl.

 FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, March 17, 1973…An angry pilot of the Khmer Air Force killed 43 people and injured 35 in Cambodia after making a dive bomb attack on the presidential palace in Phnom Penh. Most of the dead were inside the barracks of the palace guards, including families of the guards…Born: Caroline Corr, Irish musician and drummer of The Corrs; in Dundalk, County Louth …

       Caroline Corr, the not unattractive drummer for a not unattractive musical group.

Top song in the country was KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG by Roberta Flack. A goodie.

Myself, I was out of college, out of work, and almost out of my marriage. Just had to hang on a few more months. During this coming week I would have been pretty intensively in rehearsal for THREE MEN ON A HORSE. This would be one of my last shows before I joined Actors Equity and went all perfessional. It would also be the only college show I did after graduating. Hey, my old director needed me! He flashed the Rick-Signal and I answered. The show would open on the coming Friday and close the next night. It was a small-college show in a small town. Not enough audience for more than that. But it was a good show with a really primo role for yours truly.

But there would be no rehearsal this Saturday night, so I could stay home and take in the double feature on Channel 41’s FRIGHT NIGHT. We were treated to two chillers every Saturday night. This went on for a few wonderful years and was hosted by local actor Charles Kissinger as The Fearmonger. Basically we saw a closeup of Kissinger with spooky underlighting. He would introduce the movies and sprinkle in too many ancient groaner jokes. I never laughed at one of them. I would have been embarrassed if I had.

The big attraction on this FRIGHT NIGHT was a Karloff classic from the ‘30s. Had it been a Universal production I probably would have seen it already. But this was from Warner Brothers. That night I watched, for the first time…

THE WALKING DEAD

I had seen photos from this movie in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. As I recall they gave off spooky vibes and, while I’d heard or read very little about the film, what I had picked up in bits and pieces had all sounded positive, so I was very hopeful. 

And this time I was not disappointed. The movie was a crackerjack, no doubt about it. Spooky and weird and kind of oddly religious. I thought it was great, just great. For some reason, I think I’ve seen it only once more in the last half century. Seems like I would have sought it out more than that. But, I think not, so I believe this will be only my third look at it. I remember atmosphere more than anything else, so I expect this viewing will appear pretty fresh to me. Let’s find out…

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Movie fans know Michael Curtiz as the director of CASABLANCA, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. Monster Kids know the truth. He’s the guy who made DOCTOR X, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, and THE WALKING DEAD. He also had a reputation as a taskmaster, driving cast and crew through 15 and 20 hour days. I have to wonder about the working relationship between slavedriver Curtiz and Boris Karloff, one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and a zealous advocate of actors’ rights. Might have been a tense set.

Phenomenally terrific supporting cast: Edmund Gwenn, Ricardo Cortez, Barton MacLane, Henry O’Neill, Addison Richards, Paul Harvey, Joe Sawyer. Young romantic leads Warren Hull and Marguerite Churchill don’t come off as well, particularly Hull. They also play a couple of frankly reprehensible, cowardly characters. 

It’s such a WB movie--dark urban streets, gangsters, reporters, “torn from the headline” elements.

The first people John Ellman should have targeted for his revenge were the young couple who waited till the last possible instant to provide the alibi which could have saved his life.

                                                            John Ellman, pre-death.

From my earlier viewings, plus some stuff I’d read, I thought that Karloff had borrowed too much of the Monster for this performance. Now I don’t think so. The movie itself is somewhat guilty of that, but not Boris. I mean, it’s the same actor and he’s playing a reanimated corpse, so there are, of course, similarities. But Karloff’s John Ellman is not the Monster Part II.

                                                          John Ellman, post-resurrection.

I was right before. It’s a great horror movie. First class right down the line. I would say that it’s one of two great horror films Karloff made in the ‘30s for someone other than Universal, the other being Columbia’s THE BLACK ROOM.